Literature
Where are Yeats, Eliot and Plath in a new survey of 20th-century poetry?
Shelley famously and optimistically proclaimed that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Adorno famously and pessimistically declared that…
Fame made Gabriel García Márquez a pedantic bore
Gerald Martin’s titanic biography of 2010, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, was the product of 17 years of research and…
Writing as revenge: Memories of the Future, by Siri Hustvedt, reviewed
Why are people interested in their past? One possible reason is that you can interact with it, recruiting it as…
Critical injuries: the perils of book reviews
A decade ago, a publisher produced a set of short biographies of Britain’s 20th-century prime ministers, which I reviewed unenthusiastically.…
The two works of fiction I re-read annually
Long ago, I interviewed Edmund White and found that the photographer assigned to the job was the incomparable Jane Bown…
Who really wants to read feminist children’s books?
A friend of mine who commissions book reviews has added a sub-category to the list of titles coming up: ‘femtrend’,…
How I write
How do they do it? Among writers, the earnest audience member at a literary festival who asks, ‘Do you write…
What I’ve learned reciting poems in the street
It was past midnight in Norwich. There was a keen wind rifling up London Street. It was dark and it…
Aphorisms and the arts: from Aristotle to Oscar Wilde
The author of this jam-packed treasure trove has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000 and…
Autumn, season of conkers and new boots
Each year when I see the first conker of the autumn I think: fire up the ancestral ovens! This incendiary…
Meet the librarians – and book borrowers – of the Calais Jungle
Sikander and I are sitting at a small table in a small shed. The shed is filled floor-to-ceiling with books:…
Rain, shine and the human imagination — from Adam and Eve to David Hockney
‘Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing,’ pleads Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘Whenever people…
There’s something about Mary (Wollstonecraft and Shelley)
If Mary Wollstonecraft, as she once declared, ‘was not born to tred in the beaten track’, the same with even…
The prophet Tolstoy and his dodgy vicar
One fine day in June 1896, a lone Russian nihilist visited Leo Tolstoy on his country estate. Come to hear…
Churchill was as mad as a badger. We should all be thankful
Land sakes! Another book about Winston Churchill? Really? Give us a break, the average reader may think. Actually though, as…
Is any kind of sex still taboo in literature?
The first gay marriage will be conducted this Easter, and those who still object to the idea find themselves in…
Ian Buruma’s notebook: Teenagers discover Montaigne the blogger
Bard College in upstate New York, where I teach in the spring semester, is an interesting institution, once better known…
By the book: The NSA is behaving like a villain in a 1950s novel
The continuing drip-feed of stories about governments and friendly-seeming internet giants sifting through our data has left some citizens feeling…
Breakdowns, suicide attempts — and four great novels
Among the clever young Australians who came over here in the 1960s to find themselves and make their mark, a…
'Where are the happy fictional spinsters?'
This book arose from an argument. Lifelong bookworm Samantha Ellis and her best friend had gone to Brontë country and…
Look! Shakespeare! Wow! George Eliot! Criminy! Jane Austen!
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
Lose weight the Muriel Spark way
Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from…
Mind your language: The springs before the Arab Spring
Two hundred and forty-years ago next Tuesday, Thomas Gray was buried in his mother’s grave in Stoke Poges churchyard. In…
Most Popular
- Read
- Read
Latest
Cartoons
